[tlhIngan Hol] qepHom grammar questions

nIqolay Q niqolay0 at gmail.com
Thu Oct 5 19:25:53 PDT 2017


On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 7:55 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

I've answered this over and over in this thread.


The "you" in that sentence refers to Marc Okrand, who the questions are
intended for, since this thread was started about things that mayqel hoped
to ask him at the next qepHom. I already know your thoughts on *-vaD* and
indirect objects.

This is the same question as 2.


Pretty much. But I am curious to know about stative verbs with *-vaD*
specifically, and I didn't want to assume that he would think of mentioning
those in his answer for question 2. (When I asked "Are there certain verbs
that can never take it?", I was thinking more about exceptions for specific
verbs rather than classes of them, along the lines of how *ghuS* never
takes *-rup* or how *neH* doesn't use *'e'*.)

But if you agree that that's how "it was first described" (which is what
> Lieven is arguing against), then there's no reason to think anything has
> changed. Lieven's *Star Trek Discovery* transcript is not canon.
>

I'm with you, honestly. I don't think it's likely to be grammatical. But
one thing I really enjoy about the Klingon language is when Okrand fleshes
out its cultural background with details you might not care about if you're
just translating everyday things. Slang, dialectical variations, social
class variations, words borrowed from other languages, which errors are
common among different types of novices, which errors are informally
tolerable and which aren't, words for obscure or specific Klingon cultural
concepts that are mostly useless in everyday use (*wob* is my favorite of
these). That sort of thing. I'm curious to know the cultural status of the
3rd-person-indirect-object prefix trick. Is it technically wrong but
casually acceptable, like "ain't" or "there's two people here"? Is it
out-and-out wrong, like "he eateds lunch" or "me talk like caveman"? Is it
a dialect thing, acceptable only in some regions or social classes, and if
so, what do most Klingons think of those regions or social classes? Is it
something that was acceptable in Discovery times but fell out of acceptable
use by the time Maltz moved into Okrand's basement? And so on. There's a
lot of ways for a construction to be wrong.
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